New EPA chief: "I haven't exactly been a wallflower"
Her inaugural speech focuses on climate change
In her first speech as the brand new head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy focused on climate change. The following are excerpts from the remarks she delivered last week at Harvard Law School:
Getting confirmed two weeks ago was truly an honor of a lifetime and that’s good because it seemed to take even longer than that to get from nomination to the Senate vote. Ok slight exaggeration. A thousand plus questions, 70 plus Senate visits and 147 days later and here I am – “that was easy!”
I want to take a just minute up front – before I do anything else - to thank President Obama for his willingness to nominate and stand by me - every step of the way, knowing the challenge we would both be facing. I haven’t exactly been a wallflower at EPA. I know that will surprise many of you. But the President not only supported me, he confirmed his support for EPA and our mission to protect public health and the environment when he nominated me. Under President Obama, EPA has seen one of the most productive times in the agency’s history. In the air world we took common sense steps to reduce mercury pollution and other harmful toxics from our air, we established new health standards to reduce fine particle pollution, soot and sulfur dioxide, and we took a giant leap forward towards a cleaner energy future with our greenhouse gas standards for cars and trucks – standards which were welcomed by car manufacturers, the UAW and consumer groups. It doesn’t get any better than that but that doesn’t mean these actions were without controversy; far from it.
But the President knew and I knew that EPA had followed the science and the law and took advantage of every creative, flexible, cost-effective opportunity to make way for solutions that would serve this nation’s energy needs and the needs of America families. And we both knew there was so much more we could do and had to do over the next few years to build on this success.